To See You Smile Again
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: Emi remembers an older brother that used to be happy, and wants to bring that boy back. Takes place before the series begins. Family fluff.


** At the beginning of the series, the older sibling that Aichi's sister describes, who hated going to school and never wanted to get out of bed, sounds mildly depressed in retrospect. I'm not very far in the show and considering how slow I am at watching anime, I'll probably never catch up. Don't hate me. **

** In this story, the characters are maybe a couple of years younger than they are at the start of the series. (In the anime, Aichi is fifteen.) According to the wiki, their mom's name is Shizuka. **

** Disclaimer: Does not own. I'm forever alone with my plot bunnies. Instead of cats, I'll be known as "that crazy bunny hoarder" when I get old.**

Like a good mother, Shizuka Sendou did not immediately berate her child when she walked into the kitchen and found the place a mess. On the contrary, she was curious and mildly amused; Emi was the more active of her two children, and even then Shizuka rarely saw her at work with this kind of vigor. She even thought Emi hadn't noticed her at first, until the child muttered a slightly delayed, "Welcome back, mom."

Shizuka smiled back warmly, even if her daughter couldn't see from where she was currently sitting, and returned the greeting with a, "thank you". Then she went back to observing. Upon closer inspection, the mess spread allthroughout the kitchen was entirely related to cooking. The carton of eggs left on the counter, the sugar spilling into the sink, and a pile of bowls Emi had taken out of the cupboards... She'd used only two of the bowls, and the rest remained stacked on the table next to the cookbook Emi had laid out for her project.

Thankfully, the stove wasn't on; Shizuka didn't consider her daughter quite old enough to be operating the stove all by herself yet, and she wasn't quite sure if she'd have been able to forgive Emi this easily if she'd tried.

The rest, she attempted to push to the back of her mind. She would have preferred a little less disorder, but Shizuka was pleased if Emi wanted to do something productive in the house. Nevertheless...

"Next time, I wish you'd wait until I got home so I could help you," the woman sighed.

"I'm sorry," Emi replied, quite curtly. She ran back to the counter with a set of teaspoons for measuring, and began to pour the contents from a cannister of cinnamon onto one of them. Shizuka cringed slightly as, thanks to her daughter's overeagerness, most of it missed the spoon and only added to the mess on the counter instead. "But it was urgent, I couldn't wait."

"Then why didn't you ask Aichi to help you?"

Granted, baking didn't seem like something Aichi would be interested in... Then again, her son was interested in very little these days.

"He's not coming out of his room. It's Sunday, so he's going to sleep until twelve if we let him, you know that." Emi sighed, and it began to sound almost as if she were complaining: "Then he'll wake up, come downstairs long enough for dinner, maybe spend a few hours on the computer, and go back to sleep..."

...Shizuka's cheerful mood suddenly turned dour and she decided to drop the issue for the moment. She was a mother who wanted nothing but the best for her children in life, but with Aichi it was difficult. The worst was that there was little she could do to help him, and he often refused to talk about anything so she wouldn't have known where to start regardless.

It was easier to focus on the positives instead. For the moment, at least.

"Well," Shizuka started, glancing at the refridgerator, "you're baking for an event at school, right? But I wonder why I wasn't informed of-"

"I'm not," Emi clarified. The curtness was partnered with a sense of distraction, as the child began stirring whatever it was that she'd combined in the first bowl.

If it wasn't a school event, that would explain why there was nothing posted on Emi's school calender, stuck to the fridge with a couple of smiley face magnets. Students received a new calender once a month, with important notes written on them by the schoolboard for reference.

Shizuka walked around to the table contemplatively. On top of the table was a cookbook, it's pages opened to reference desserts. The recipe on one page, combined with the ingredients strewn about the kitchen, made it fairly obvious what Emi was busying herself with.

"You're making cookies?"

"Yes, Mom."

"Hm..." Shizuka leaned back against a corner of the table, where it wasn't so dirty, and smiled. "So you're making cookies for something urgent, but it's not a school event?"

"Yes."

"...I something special happening?"

This suggestioned cued a deep silence on Emi's behalf. Suddenly, the atmosphere seemed solemn enough that Shizuka ceased to question it, and continued to upkeep the silence by helping her daughter layout the cookies on a baking pan and set the oven without saying another word.

There was nothing special about the reason Emi made her cookies. There was nothing special about the way her brother suddenly came home every day with new cuts and bruises, or the sadness in his eyes and the way he'd slink back to his room without saying hardly a word to them in weeks. What would be special is if Emi's presents made her brother the way he used to be, where Aichi still got bullied, but at least not as badly, and he'd still managed to smile on occasion. Emi didn't see why the bullies liked beating up her brother so much. Aichi was a good person and he didn't deserve this; if they stopped picking on him long enough to realize that, Emi was sure they would like him too.

In the meantime, her brother would have to make do with cookies. Emi wanted him to know that his little sister still cared about him, even if he spent all day in bed sleeping now. She didn't want him to get too sad.

Aichi had actually been semi-awake for quite some time, lying comfortably in the haze of having just woken up without wanting to get out of bed, when he heard a quiet knock at his door. Both his mother and his sister were respectful enough of his privacy to enter his room without knocking; he had no idea which of them it was. Aichi would have sighed the same way even if he had known.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was slightly after noon, so one of them had probably come to get him for dinner a little earlier than usual. Or perhaps they'd try to convince him to spend lunch with him as well, maybe suggest going out to eat somewhere today, though Aichi usually got out of that by insisting he wasn't hungry. He would fake sick if he had to, after which his mother always let him off, even if she knew he was faking just because she didn't want Aichi to hurt himself doing so.

...He really was a horrible person, wasn't he?

The voice at the door called, "Aichi!" in his little sister's voice, which made sense. More often than not, Emi was the one who dutifully woke him up. For dinner, for school... sometimes he just wished they would leave him alone and let him sleep away his misery.

He set his feet on the floor and moved across the room wearily, opening the door just as Emi finished saying, "If you don't wake up this instant, I'm coming in!" She seemed a little surprised that she didn't have to make good on her threat for once, but the effect wore off as quickly as Emi could blink her eyes. The attempt to keep herself from grinning lasted hardly any longer.

Emi had both arms behind her back as she asked him, in far too cheerful of a tone, "Guess what?"

Already, Aichi felt tired again. Emi was just going to tell him about some doll she'd seen while out shopping with their mother, he assumed. Or maybe she had a story about a lost kitten to tell him. She'd done both before, and the amount of energy she failed to contain while telling him these stories only exhausted him more. He didn't want to listen to them.

Still, like a good older brother, he asked her, rubbing away the remnants of sleep from his eyes. "I don't know... What is it, Emi?"

Emi moved her arms from behind her back and held out the cookies to him, wrapped up neatly in a clean dish cloth, so certain this would make her brother smile again that her own grin grew even wider. She and their mother had taste tested them before she'd gone upstairs – which Emi had been reluctant to do because these were supposed to be _Aichi's _cookies – and determined they'd turned out even better than she had imagined they would.

Aichi already looked surprised, which the little girl considered a good thing. At least it was a different emotion than upset or hurt.

"These are for you, big brother! So... be happy now, okay?"

"I... Thank you, Emi."

**I decided to stop writing after that, because in my head Aichi started crying and I wasn't sure if that was a plausible reaction or not- what? I wonder if it's because I've been in that kind of mood lately... Either way, I hope the story didn't end too abruptly. **

**It's not Kai/Aichi (everyone's CF!V OTP?), but did I do a good job anyway?**

**I might edit this later, but it actually looks pretty good right now, from where I'm sitting. Aside from my cat stepping all over the computer and messing up some things, but I think I caught all of those.**

**LATER: Had it proofread and assured the story looked okay, and not too sappy, so I'm posting it as is.**


End file.
